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National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence to hold two public lectures at Miami

01/11/2012

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Wade Davis

Award-winning anthropologist, ethnobotanist, best-selling author, photographer and filmmaker Wade Davis, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, will present two public lectures at Miami University, Jan. 19 and Jan. 20.

He will present “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, in Hall Auditorium. Free tickets (two per person) are available at the box office in Shriver Center for the Jan. 19 lecture.

He will also present the annual Belk Lecture on “One River and the Lost Amazon – The Legacy of Richard Evans Schultes” at 4 p.m. Friday, Jan. 20, in the Shriver Center Heritage Room. Schultes is considered the father of modern ethnobotany.

Davis travels the globe to live alongside indigenous people and document their cultural practices in books, photographs and film. He is one of the most influential western advocates for preserving the world’s indigenous cultures.

He spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best-seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.

Among his many books are the recently published Into the Silence (2011), an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest; and The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, a collection of the Massey Lectures he delivered in 2009 – Canada’s most prestigious public intellectual forum.

Davis’ lecture on “The Wayfinders” will offer a firsthand account of the environmental crises threatening indigenous cultures around the globe. It “celebrates the rich diversity of indigenous cultures and traditions while serving as a timely reminder of the dangers modernization and globalization pose to traditional ways of life.”

Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction.

In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the National Geographic Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the 100-year history of the club.

The lectures are sponsored by the Center for American and World Cultures (CAWC) and the department of botany with support from many other campus departments.